When Marriage Meets Mission: Priscilla & Aquila

My first time ever, I've needed a sweat rag, and I haven't even started yet. All right. Good morning. And again, welcome to Hope Lowertown. Those who don't know me, my name is Brian, lead pastor here, and excited to jump into week three of our summer series that we've called Cloud of Witnesses. And really, that just comes from Hebrews chapter 12, where we read there. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders in a sin that so easily entangles. And so it just. The chapter right previously, 11 precedes 12. And that is what's kind of called the hall of Faith. And the author of Hebrews there just lists a lot of people that are, you know, these people that put their faith in God. And a lot of them, you might read that and go, why are they even in that list? And then, ironically, nobody that I picked to do one of these kind of character studies in this cloud of witnesses is mentioned in Hebrews chapter 11. So it kind of took a little bit of my own liberties of picking different people and excited to jump into where we're going to be this morning. And a matter of fact, what we are going to be doing is looking at specifically Priscilla and Aquila, who. I mean, we could argue this all day, but not that long ago, when we went through the Book of Hebrews, I kind of convinced myself that possibly Priscilla might be the author of Hebrews of being a woman. And that's why Hebrews isn't mentioned who the author is. It might not have been received very well by her Hebrew brothers and sisters. It's very Pauline. And she was very acquainted, well, with Paul. And so this is kind of. I didn't say this last week, but last week we kind of looked at Titus and as a single. Excuse me, as a single guy. And then we have, then Priscilla and Aquila and so titled this When Marriage Meets Mission. And so you're like, okay, this is about marriage. Well, I'm not married. Listen, it's just a title, okay? There's a lot of principles that we can all take away from this. And so we're gonna be looking specifically at Acts 18, which is also ironic because we just finished going through the Book of Acts, but we didn't really hone in on this passage or even on these two individuals. And so we're gonna be doing that, and we're gonna see that where. Where they go, where Priscilla and Akul go. Cause they. They move. They move multiple times to start churches and to help the apostle Paul that where they go, the gospel goes with them. And so again, just keep in mind the principles of these texts. And so I do want to last week kind of more, maybe more of a pointed, a challenge to those who might find themselves just as single or maybe even married with no kids. And this week being a little bit different focus maybe a little bit more on married couples. And yet you will see that the principles still apply. Just for fun, just because I like doing this with ChatGPT, I just put in, hey, kind of put the title in there. And then it came up with like a Single Guy Crashes Married Couple's House, Builds the Church. And it was kind of like a Seinfeld sitcom looking thing. And so it was funny enough to me, at least that I wanted to share that with you. But really what I want to do is focus. And I've got a couple quotes here from C.S. lewis, but he says this in his book The Four Loves, that friendship is born at the moment when one man says to another, what you too? I thought that no one but myself fill in the blank. And that's why I had you ask that question this morning. Because my guess is that if we were to go around the room and say, hey, what interests do you have? That it would probably overlap with somebody else or maybe there is no overlap, but someone's always wanted to get interested in that thing. They just don't know how to do that or because there's a difference between meeting someone face to face, doing something with someone, and looking it up on YouTube. And I know I've shared this story years ago, back when I had my Jeep RIP that I loved working on my jeep, but I didn't know anything about working on jeeps. And then there was a guy in my church at the time and I was working on it and I was only watching YouTube and he said, hey, you know, I used to be a jeep mechanic back in Vietnam. I know a thing or two about working on old jeeps. And I was like, that's cool. And. And we became really good friends. He was much older than me, he was in his 60s at the time, and I was in my 20s. We became really good friends and we got just working on jeeps. And then I started helping him. He was kind of a prepper, so I'd helped him plant seeds and get stuff ready for the end of the world. But it was really cool to get to know this guy. And I think this is what happens. I thought I was the only one that was like this. And there's something about the church that draws us in together. Because the greatest thing that we have in common is our Savior is Jesus. Paul and I, this last week, we were meet up sometimes on Wednesdays and he was just talking about this reading about someone who's saying, oh, you want community, you don't need the church. Matter of fact, if you just really want community, just go golfing. What? Like I've been golfing and I've never asked the guy sitting on the cart next. I only ever do the golf cart walking. What are you talking about? No, not a chance. Not anymore. Too old for that or just lazy, I guess is probably the better answer. But I've never asked the guy sitting in the cart next to me, how's your marriage doing? Right. How are you doing when it comes to raising your children? How's your Bible study going? I've just never done that playing golf. There's something about being in community, in a church that draws us together because we go, wow, you really think that Jesus was real? You really believe that he died for your sins like that? That's the most important thing to me. And if it is to you too, that then we have this supernatural connection, if you will. It's not just an interest group. We are fully devoted followers, which then turns to depth of love for one another and then therefore pushing one another to pursue deeper reflection of that love of Christ and embrace that you are loved and you are lovely in Christ's eyes. That you are good, not necessarily good, you're bad, you're sinful. We all know that. But looking at my position in Christ. So just briefly, I cut out a little bit of this. Just who were Priscilla and Aquila? I kind of had some extra biblical texts and just some kind of church history on who they were. But what we do know is that at least Aquila was Jewish. We'll read that in the text. And so Priscilla, we don't really know, but that they were, at least from what we can tell from the text, that they were dinks. So they weren't single, they were dinks. Dual income, no kids. And so this might be for those of you who might classify yourself as that I made this up. Maybe you are SIMCs. Single income, multiple children or demos, dual income, many offspring, whatever. It doesn't matter where your label is. Right. I think that we can learn from Priscilla and Aquila and see how they are on mission for Christ and not just then compare ourselves to them and say, wow, we just don't Add up. I'm just not good enough. No, no, no. How can we encourage one another in Christ? How can I point people to the most important person and aspect in my life? So they were a friend of Paul. And as we look at these different passages, Romans chapter 16, just verse 3. Here I have greet. He says, greet Priscilla and Aquila, my co workers in Christ Jesus. In 2nd Timothy 4:19, greet Priscilla and Aquila and the household of ones of us. In First Corinthians 16, verse 19, the churches in the province of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord. Right. What's interesting about this, when you, when you see them being mentioned multiple times, it's not just in one, one letter that they're mentioned multiple times, although that does happen. They're also referenced in Acts, which we'll get to. But this is a long term relationship. We only know this because that they meet in Corinth in AD. Corinth in AD 50. And then Paul's last letter is about 16, 17 years later that they would have been friends for almost two decades. This is important when it comes to friendship. The older I get, the longer it takes to establish real friendship and real relationships. It takes time. I remember when we first came to Hope and we were starting a small group and we had this couple that joined us. They were great and I loved them. And it had been maybe a month where they had been in our small group and they came to me literally in tears, not to shame them or anything like this, because I get where they're at. They had just graduated from college and they. You go from this really intimate community with your roommates and friends and then your church and all these different things and maybe your campus ministry and you just get really close and you leave that and you start something new. And it maybe had been a month and they came to me in tears saying we just want friends like we used to have. And it was like, you've been here for a month, like this takes time, especially if I only see you once a week on a Sunday morning and maybe we exchange two words in a hallway. This is gonna take a long time. And so I think there's something about this rareness of this relationship, this long term friendship that takes commitment. We don't read about it, but if they are human beings, which Priscilla and Aquila and Paul were, I'm sure that they didn't always get along, but I'm sure there was conflict that they had to work out with one another. But they have the same goal and the same Savior. And therefore, as for first, Peter tells us that they are built up into a spiritual family. Another C.S. lewis quote for you this morning. This is from again, the four Loves. He says this. He has two friends and one of them dies. And he says this about his relationship now with his friend, who's still alive. In each of my friends, there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself, I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity. I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never see again. Ronald's reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him to myself, now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. Hence, true friendship is the least jealous of loves. That is a profound statement from C.S. lewis. And what I want to try to really get into us this morning, this idea of community and spiritual family. It's amplified when there are more of us doing this together. That you are able to add something to my marriage, the way that I raise my children, in ways that I wouldn't even have thought about had you not been in my life, and hopefully vice versa. There's that phrase that blood is thicker than water. But again, that's not the real phrase. The real phrase that for whatever reason got mutilated and completely flipped upside down is that the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb, meaning I've got brothers and sisters. I love my brother and I love my sister. I didn't get to choose who my brother and my sister was, but we do get to choose our friends and the blood of the covenant. And especially in our context, the covenant and the blood of the covenant of Christ. Christ is thicker than even my familial actual relationships with my immediate family. When we truly let someone into our lives, going back to this quote from C.S. lewis, we see facets of them than had we never interacted with them, had we never invited them into our space, had they never invited us into their space, they bring out aspects and challenge us than had we never been friends. So they were Paul's friends. They supported the ministry. I'm just kind of skipping. Well, not skipping, just looked at the Paul's friend. But they support the ministry. And so in what way? These are almost inseparable with Paul because Paul's ministry kind of is his life that he never gets married. And some would say, well, he married the church and all of that. But Paul's life was for Christ. And so how do they support it? Well, one, they support it financially in Acts, chapter 18. Let's see this. After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he had met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontius, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla. Because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome, Paul went to see them. And because he was a tent maker, as they were, he stayed and worked with them every Sabbath, he reasoned, in a synagogue, trying to persuade Jews. So they quite literally work together. So what is this idea of tent maker? It's exactly what it sounds like. Okay. It literally means maker of tents or maker of shelters, you can imagine in that culture. And so just kind of going through this, they just. It's kind of made from. From goat hair or cloth, and from the region of Cilicia, where Paul was from. And so they were made for travelers and merchants, Roman soldiers, nomadic people. So you can imagine there's a lot of people who needed and wanted tents. Another maybe option is that they made kind of the awnings for the markets, which there would have been many, you can picture in your mind's eye, kind of that culture where they just had these awnings outside of their buildings to sell things. That could have been what it is. But either way, they work together. They're side by side. They're shoulder to shoulder, working together, getting to know each other even better, but they're able to financially support themselves and then therefore be able to financially support the ministry that God was able to give them a job, maybe even what we would call, quote, unquote, a secular job, so they can support themselves and ministry. And I think we can see the connection there. And so how can we do this together? I think that it's obvious in the sense that, yeah, we have jobs and we have a lot of. You have very good jobs. And so how can we say, wow, man, how can we further the mission? How can we further the kingdom? And so I just want you to be tender to the spirit on that, especially in light of where we're at financially. But even more than that, you might say, I have a house project. I got something I need to work on. Or you might say, just invite people over to teach, to learn, deepen your friendship. As an example, Patrick, not that long ago, he was redoing all of the plumbing in his house. He didn't have a hot water heater. He was put in a water softener. And he was like, I gotta get this done. Water's off. Let's go. And he invited Ben and I over, and we. And I learned a lot. I didn't. I couldn't do it myself. But I know that when I have a plumbing need, I'm gonna be like, patrick, hey, time. Time to get to work, bud. Time to repay. No, no, that's not how that works. Right, right. But there's something about working shoulder to shoulder that allows us more interaction face to face, to deepen, like, really deepen our relationships, to get to the heart of who we are and who God wants us to be. We see also they support the ministry of Paul in their homes. And I have that plural on purpose because they do this three different times. They kind of follow behind where Paul starts a church, and then they go into that community and they invite people into their homes to start their churches. We see this in Ephesus here. Paul stayed in Corinth for some time, and then he left the brothers and sisters and sailed for Syria accompanied by Priscilla and Aquila. Before he sailed, he had his hair cut off at Chenachre because of a vow he had taken. Whatever that's all about, we don't have to worry about that. We're going to keep moving. They arrived at Ephesus, where Paul left Priscilla and Aquila. He himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. And they asked him to spend more time with them, and he declined. So they're in Ephesus and they start this house, church, and then he goes into. They go into Corinth. Right? And Corinth. These are not easy people. If you read the letter to the Corinthians, the first, these aren't like people. You're like, oh, these are. These are easy people to just invite into my house. We just have so much in common. They didn't. They had a lot of differences, but the thing they had in common was Christ. The churches in the province of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that meets at their house. All the brothers and sisters here send you greetings, greet one another with a holy kiss. And then Romans, chapter 16 in verse 2 through 5. And again, if you remember going back to that Acts passage, they were originally kicked out of Rome because of Emperor Claudius, and now they're going back into Rome to start this next church plant many years later. Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my co workers in Christ Jesus. They risked their lives for me. Some translations. They stuck out their necks for me. Not only I, but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them. Greet also the church that meets in their house. So three different church plants across the region are started in the homes of these individuals. They seem very mobile. They obviously have enough income to be able to have a house in that culture, to invite people in to that space. But here they go back to Rome, maybe even against the law, as far as Claudius was concerned, so that they can further the mission of God. How can we do this together? How do we do this? I think we. We can do this by. By inviting people into our homes. And you might be. You might be single. It might. Doesn't matter what you can. Can we invite people over? I know that it's different as a family of five to say, hey, you single individual, come over to my house and I'll feed you some food versus someone single, saying, hey, the five of us are coming over, and I got two boys. They're gonna eat everything. Okay? It's just how it works. And I get that it's different, but how can we. It doesn't have to be around food, but what do we do that everyone else does? We all eat. We all go grocery shopping. I know several of you go to the farmer's market after church. Then maybe you have a game night. Maybe you have, again, a hobby that you could invite other people into. Chaz did this many years ago during COVID Where is it? I just saw him. Okay, he's. He's gone. He left us. Just really good at calling people out today, but. But he did. He started Dungeons and Dragons. Listen, never in a million years did I ever want to play Dungeons and Dragons. And it was a lot of fun, all right? It really was. And. But what made it enjoyable was the friendship that we were able to create in that time. It was during COVID We were out in the garage and all that fun stuff. But it was really, really a good time. So what do you do? Maybe it's brunch after church again. Maybe it's taco night. Taco Tuesday we do at our house, right? Maybe it's just small group and hosting a small group. And there's just so many different ways that we can do this together. And then kind of the final way, at least in what I have for my sermon, the text here, at least making fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. And so I'm just gonna skip kind of these verses just for time's sake. But meanwhile, a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man with a thorough Knowledge of the Scriptures again, Old Testament, New Testament's not written yet. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. Listen, that's a really low bar, all right? So Priscilla and Aquila, they've been taught and discipled by Paul about the fullness of the gospel, who Jesus is, even through the Old Testament. And then this guy Apollos comes in. He wants to be a pastor. He wants to be a local church planter and pastor. And he says, I don't know much, but I know Jesus is king. I know that. I heard this story about him getting baptized. And then this voice from heaven says, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And he goes, that's all I need. God said this was his Son. And they go and they take Apollos and they. They teach him. They teach him the rest of the story. We get to do this with one another in small groups. Yes, maybe that's a more formal way to do that, but you don't have to do this formally. It could be you're reading a book or something. You just. You listen to a podcast and you. And as you're hanging out and you're. You're doing something, playing golf, whatever it is, that you're just saying, hey, let me talk about this. This thing to disciple you, to teach you about what I'm learning, and discuss it. And I think that's how we can do that together. We can show others a fuller picture of who Jesus was, who Jesus is in our lives and in their lives to us now. And that's how we make disciples and deepen relationships and make friends. Finally, we see. I think obviously the most importantly is that they lived like Jesus. They don't seek center stage. It's amazing how often that they're mentioned, but not a lot. What I read to you this morning is all that we read about Priscilla and Aquila. There's no letter written to them, like even how we saw last week with Titus. They're not apostles. They're not miracle workers in the sense that they're not raising people from the dead or healing people, at least as. As far. As far as we. We know, they're normal people, like you and like me, who are fully devoted followers of Jesus with a commitment to the church and to the gospel. And they looked and they saw that hospitality towards others, it might cost them financially, but it was worth it, because Jesus is worth it that they partnered with Paul and served him by opening their homes because Jesus is worth it. They, they discipled others and counted the cost of that maybe relationally or moving from one neighborhood to another neighborhood to another neighborhood, back to another neighborhood. They counted the cost because Jesus is worth it. And we can see how they reflect Christ in the way that Jesus welcomes the outsider, that they do the same. And maybe not an outsider with Paul and Apollos, but for sure the church plants that would have met in their house. We see that Jesus lays down his life and we see that they were willing to risk their necks for the gospel. Jesus pours himself out into people and obviously they do the same. But they don't replace Jesus. And I want to make sure that we understand this, that they don't replace Jesus. In those who are meeting in their homes and those in Paul's life and Apollos life. They're not Jesus, they're pointing people to Jesus. One thing that I do every time I have a premarital class, that we walk through Ephesians chapter 5 and just mention like, you make a terrible savior, like husband, potential husband. You cannot save your wife. You're not gonna make her a better person. You can't do that. She cannot save you. You make a terrible savior and likewise, whatever. Again, what category we find ourselves in our stage of life to say, I'm gonna look at this person and I'm gonna try to, I'm really gonna try to help them, right? I can make them a better person. You can't do that. You are, you are a horrible savior. But you can point them to the true, the true Savior. And those of you who might say, wow, man, so and so invited me over for the first time. You know, I've known him for eight years since we've been going to this church and this is the first time this has happened. Don't, don't look at it like, well, they're just taking pity on me or whatever. No, this is an opportunity to potentially build some life changing relationships that they need you the way that you need them. Whether it's again, how you might be able to influence their relationship with one another as a married couple, as parenting and vice versa, might be able to teach them just how to, how to cook something. Some of you guys are really into smoking meats. Teach someone, right? It's a cool skill to learn and to look at. And of course you can YouTube it, of course you can TikTok it, but man, it means a whole lot more to be able to ask questions in person. So in conclusion, just in Gospel application, how are you making room for others that you can point them to Jesus? How are you making room for others so you can point them to Jesus? The question here that I'm asking is not to ask yourself, am I doing enough? Am I doing. That's not the right question. Because you can answer that, unfortunately, with law and legalism, and the law will do and answer that question, am I doing enough? In two different ways. One way will be no, because you can always do more. You can always give of yourself more. You can always give more money. You can always give more time. Well, I'm only giving three nights of the week to the church at a small group or spending time with my neighbors and then trying to point them to Jesus. I guess I could add four more nights. Of course, you can always do more. You can always give more. You can always invite people over more, and you will always fall short if your goal is try to answer the question, am I doing enough? You will never be enough. Martin Luther, again, hero of mine, he really struggled with this, that am I doing enough? That he would go to confession for hours and miss Mass and therefore have to spend more time in confession. That he went to what was these stairs, and he did this kind of pilgrimage, and he. And he prayed on his knees, and he got. And he spent all, you know, days going up this thing, and he finally gets the top. And the question that he says that he reflected on was, well, I hope that works right? Because your question is, is it enough? And the answer is no. You will always fall short of the glory of God if you're just trying to be enough. That's one aspect of the law. Another aspect of the law is to say, boy, I am pretty good. I look at what Priscilla and Aquila did. They support the ministry financially. Check. I do that. They invite people into their homes. Check. I do that. They make disciples of Jesus. Yeah, check I do that. Look at me. Look how good I am. And therefore, if you aren't doing that, then you're bad. I'm good. That's not okay. That's law. That's sin. So we need to look at this through the lens of the Gospel. And we need to point people to love of Christ and the community that we can have in Christ. That's our motivation, because you genuinely care for one another. And it might be inconvenient, it might come at a cost, but we become more like Christ in the process. And we point people more like. Point people to become more like Christ in The same time, Jesus moved towards us in love, and his spirit dwells in us. And now we get to demonstrate that love, not to earn the love from God. We can't do that. I just recently read a book about the prodigal son, kind of A Homecoming by Henri Nouwen. And it was a really good book. And in this book, it's just this idea of. Of that I am kind of write yourself into the story that I am the prodigal son, and the Father sees me from afar and he embraces me. I am his beloved son. I was dead, and now I'm alive. And I'm also the elder brother who looks and says, hey, I've been with you the whole time. Aren't I good enough? How come you don't love me? And the Father says, everything I have is yours. Don't you see that Those are true? And that's kind of easy, in a sense, in our culture to see that God loves us. But it is another aspect to look at relationships, because those human relationships can go sideways real fast. And we can be hurt, we can be betrayed, whether it's intentional or unintentional. And so there are risks, there are inconveniences, there are costs. But it's not to earn the love from God or even from others, because we can't earn that. We can't even earn love from human beings. We are already loved by God, and the grace of Jesus creates room in us, in our busy schedule, for others. And so that's the question, right, that I want us to enter into as we take these elements. I was reminded today that today is Corpus Christi. It's not necessarily something that we celebrate as Baptists, but it just means the body of Christ. And it's cool to think that we get to celebrate that this morning, that we enter into a time of communion. We do this every single week here at Lowertown. And we take these elements. The bread that represents the body of Christ, we represent the juice that represents the blood of Christ to forgive us of our sins. And so if you're a follower of Jesus, I would love for you to take these elements with us. You don't need to be a member of this church or a member of any church, but if you say, yes, I love Jesus. He is king of my life and my soul, and I want to point others to him. Then I would love for you to join us in that. The worship team's gonna come back up. They're gonna sing two songs, and so feel free to grab these elements, take a seat and pray. Repent whatever may be and whatever conviction the Holy Spirit has put on your heart this morning. And then join us in singing Let Me Pray, and then we'll be dismissed. Heavenly Father, thank you for our time again together this morning. We love you and thank you. That we can look to an example like Priscilla and Aquila, who are not you, who are not Jesus. That they are not the center of the world. They're not center stage. They're not even apostles. They're none of that. They just are fully devoted followers of Jesus that invite others in. And so could we look to their example, that cloud of witnesses, to help us, to motivate us, to point other people to Jesus? That it came at a cost for Priscilla and Aquila, and it probably, and most likely, and it will come at a cost for ourselves. It might come at a cost relationally, it might come at a cost financially. It might kind of come out of cost for inconvenience sake. But you are good and you are God, and you are worth it. Because as we saw a couple weeks ago with Hagar, you see us, you hear us, and you know. You know what it's like to be hurt by friends. And so would that just not be a reason to kind of to wall up and not want to get out and become friends with maybe even people within our own context in our church, we would become fully devoted followers of you and then therefore help others also become fully devoted followers. We love you, and it's in Christ's name that we pray. Amen.